D&D General The DM Shortage

[Minigiant]

???

Running a modern game takes 1-3 hours of prep for every 1 hour of play. It's a lot shorter if you are experienced. But that's the point.

If you want to play a modern D&D that covers all 3 pillars, hits the aspects of the PC's race/class/background, and offers an exciting setting or narrative, it takes a long time to prep for a newish DM wh isn't trained set by step.

If you want to play an old school style game, a game that is PC agnostic, or uses a simple setting or narrative, it only takes a swift training to prep for a newish DM who isn't trained step by step..

 

[Vaalingrade]

Here's the thing:

Do I want WotC to release a product that actually teaches DMing?

Absolutely.

Do I actually know what that product should look like?

No.

Because from what I've seen, all the Tabletop RPGs I've played, I've never seen one. Pretty much every game's GMing advice is like 'here's some scripts, here's bunch of tools to use once you're good enough, here's how to do game design'. If you're lucky, there's some 'here's how to deal with personal dynamics at the table' and 'here's how not to let it go to your head', but the baseline, nuts and bolts of how to build an adventure and tell a story with other people' ?

Hell, I'm trying to do that right now and I have no reference. I've got the best D&D DMG, the 4e DMG, the best game sourcebook, HERO 5ER, and the most barebones 'getting started' started set, the 5E Quick Start constantly open in front of me and I know what I'm producing is at best going to be useful for improving someone who learned to run a game from observing someone else DMing.

 

[Smackpixi]

Thereal issue is 5e's audience doesn't want to be basic DMs.

This seems to be the issue. Combined with people believing they don’t need to know the rules to be able to play D&D. Like, 3 people sitting around with a shrink wrapped copy of Wingspan going on Reddit looking a fourth to join their group and run a game for them would be silly. But for some reason that’s not considered weird in D&D.

Now I know you can put everything in @Malmuria ’s post on the DM, but if that’s the expectation, I think maybe right there is cause of the shortage.

If there’s a group of people who know the rules, anyone of them is perfectly capable of running pretty much any of the best selling adventures on DMs Guild, most of which are pretty good, with little prep. So long as expectations are measured, maybe every NPC has the same Brittish accent, pretty sure everyone will have a good time.

Being a Basic DM with an AL adventure is relatively easy if you know the rules. Just read what it says on the page, and plop down the included map. Being Great at that takes what being great at anything takes, practice. Creating your own world that you can run players through, or perhaps prepping some of the Big Books takes a lot of outside time, yes, but people don’t have to do that.

 

[Vaalingrade]

If you want to play a modern D&D that covers all 3 pillars, hits the aspects of the PC's race/class/background, and offers an exciting setting or narrative, it takes a long time to prep for a newish DM wh isn't trained set by step.

The secret is that there's only one important pillar you need to focus on and it's not the one the books think, and especially not the one the internet thinks.

Hint: It's Social. Always has been.

 

[Imaro]

I think it just boils down to more people wanting to play rather than run. They are fundamentally different experiences and while I can't be 100% certain... I honestly believe the majority of people would rather play than run and regardless of how simple or how much advice is published.... DM'ing isn't where most people find their idea of fun in the game.

 

[MichaelSomething]

Demand; meet supply...

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[Celebrim]

Or, you can pick up an OSR module or 1 page dungeon and spend 30 minutes reading it before play?

Fun as a one shot for noobs maybe, but even an OSR module takes more than 30 minutes to prep if you want to do a good job of it.

 

[Xamnam]

Running a modern game takes 1-3 hours of prep for every 1 hour of play. It's a lot shorter if you are experienced. But that's the point.

If the above poster meant they were running 10-20 hour sessions, that would certainly change my reaction.

But based on my experience from when I ran my first ever campaign, I would disagree with your estimation, especially given that I frequently had more material prepared than a given session needed, while running under that. There are games that can warrant that much prep, and there are DMs that can enjoy spending that much time doing prep, and I have absolutely no guff with either scenario there, let them have their fun. However, saying a modern game takes that much prep time per session feels like the sort of stuff that creates the title problem here, more than what the system actually asks for in prep.

 

[Leatherhead]

Putting aside the general anxiety that a new DM might face, the books aren't making it easy for them.

The rules for creating monsters are a bit obtuse, and don't really give a fair try for measuring non-DPR contributions to combat.

Encounter building is likewise nebulous.

Most of the pre-written adventures require heavy amounts of re-writing and prepwork.

 

[Celebrim]

Most of the pre-written adventures require heavy amounts of re-writing and prepwork.

That's one of the biggest problems.

And I'm not sure exactly what you do about it accept take a big risk on publishing modules that are less ambitious than what impresses a jaded DM like me. More "Lost Mine of Phandelver" type stuff.

One summer I ran an open dungeon crawl at a local gaming store every week. At first, I was trying to prep mini adventures to the standards of what I might run at my table. And it sort of worked. It was really hard to condense things down to something that could be run in 3 hours and was also approachable by players of mixed skill. Some of my adventures were hits. Others not so much, because there is only so non-linear you can be in three hours or a five-room dungeon. Also stuff I considered reasonably interesting problem solving and tactics was above the heads of many of the players at an open table. But the biggest problem is three hours of game play was taking me 10+ hours of prep work a week.

So I switched strategies and stopped offering any sort of narrative or sophistication, and just did straight up old school haven delve format in the Gygaxian style using a mega dungeon generated off inspiration from the appendix in the 1e DMG. It was mindless as all get out, and none of it made sense, and it didn't transcend kicking doors down, killing everything and taking the stuff but everyone had fun every session and I could get 3 hours of game play out of an hour or two of mapping and basic notes.

Part of the problem is that us 40-year grognards have different standards of what is fun than we did when we were 15, and we are probably asking the 15 year olds to do too much. If Matt Mercer is your guide to what it takes to run a game, well that's probably above my level of prep because he can afford to treat it like a job. I'd be bored to tears with a diet of simple dungeon crawls. I've poked way too many things with 10 foot poles and killed far too many goblins and taken their stuff. If I paid a professional DM and got that sort of lazy crap, I'd be disappointed.

But my teenage daughter would probably love that game if she could find a peer to run it. And I think we're expecting kids these days to learn to run before they can crawl.